Today brought practice to the lost ancient art of writing the story as it happens...twice. Two separate city meetings, back-to-back, totaling six hours, and at each meeting I had to have the story done - and filed with the company's cool doohikie laptop with a built-in modem - by the time each city council wrapped things up.

Thanks to my trusty friend Sam Adams and some mindless boob tube, I think I'm finally coming out of shock.

(But I think I'll stay in the fetal position for a few more hours, until the shaking goes away...)

Hopefully it serves as a good dress rehearsal for tomorrow's big show, when I'll have to deliver another remote-filed story right after Bob Dole and Tom Daschle throw down, in a former Senate Majority Leader Deathmatch.

It's part of the same lecture series that brought me face to face with the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs last month. It just happens to fall within my beat - one of the perks of covering the smallest, most affluent, most cloistered and gated cities in the area. (Unfortunately, it's the last event of this season's series.)

As far as I know, there's no one-on-one face time with either politico like last time...but who knows? If not, it's probably for the best - I don't think I'd be able to resist the urge to start every Dole question in the third person. "Dickie Cronkite needs to know: Where would Bob Dole stand on the warring Senate immigration bills?"

And if that weren't enough excitement for one day, longtime blog favorite and general drunkard Smash is flying in for a job interview at the paper tomorrow! She emailed to say she'd applied before I even knew they had started advertising to hire. And now poof - she's on a flight from O'Hare tomorrow morning and there's a decent chance she could wind up on board. Unbelievable! It's totally UCLA/Gonzaga - it just crept up and all of a sudden you're asking, "Wait, how did this happen?"

Remember my twelve-hour interview? That's about what she's got in store, except right after a flight in from mother-effing Chicago. We're planning to grab drinks after the Dole/Daschle deathmatch is behind - like 10-ish. I give us each two, maybe three sips before we're both passed out face-down on the table. At which point a waiter walks by and thinks "what a couple of fucking lightweights" and after six beautiful months of drinking ourselves under the table at the National Press Club in DC I truly believe somewhere the Almighty has a good chuckle at the irony...